Book: Helping People Win at Work, A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get An A”

Author: Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge

Key message of the book: Performance review systems can be burdensome, and managers are often compelled to assess employees on a normal distribution bell-shaped curve – with poor, good and high-performance levels. The book describes a different approach to performance review, one that stands out as effective, transparent and a catalyst for high performance for ALL employees.

The proposed framework is rooted in a business philosophy called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get An A“. The approach is compared to a teacher who, instead of grading his/her students at the end of the course, he/she supports students by sharing the final exam at the beginning of the course, then supports their learning with the aim that all students get an A, with teaching, coaching and ongoing assessment throughout the semester. For leaders in an organization, this philosophy for performance review translates into:

• Managers sitting down with their employees to set expectations and goals at the beginning of each year
• Consistent coaching, feedback and re-direction in day-to-day and weekly interactions and execution plans – while affirming or re-affirming the employee’s potential to get an A
• Regular (quarterly if possible) reviews to assess gaps, confirm progress and goals and values alignment

In this system, an employee’s performance level is the direct responsibility of his/her manager – and manager is bound to provide regular feedback – “with candor and care” – to help his/her employee get an A at the final performance evaluation. This approach puts more responsibility on the manager helping his/her employees and making sure feedback and support are provided first, before concluding if an employee is ready to be shared with competition as he/she cannot get an A: “If our culture of candor, caring, accountability and responsibility doesn’t work for you, let’s share you with the competitor.“

This framework enhances what true leadership is as the book authors highlight: “At its best, leadership is a partnership – one that involves mutual trust and respect between two people who work together to achieve common goals. When that occurs, both leader and direct report have an opportunity to influence each other. Both parties play a role in determining how things get done. In other words, it’s all about we, not me.”

The book overall reinforces what many high performing leaders and managers do and believe: a successful performance review system is one that incorporates clear communication of and alignment in goals, values and expectations from the beginning (Q1 of a year for instance) and is followed with regular feedback and touchpoints throughout the year for an employee to successfully meet his/her performance goals.

One specific learning from the book:  “Candor and caring” are needed for feedback to be effective. Caring is defined as “behavior that demonstrates your concern about the person’s development, professionally and personally” while candor is about being honest with a person about his/her performance. “With caring, you get to make deposits in your emotional bank account with a person“, while negative feedback always hurts, acting as a withdrawal in the emotional bank account with that person. The authors point to how such pain is short lived and turns into a “Learning moment” if the emotional bank account is balanced.

One favorite quote from the book: 

“The key to developing people is to catch them doing something right.”

Bonus resource: Another book review of the book

This brief book review by Growth Is A Journey is an invitation for readers to discover the book in its entirety.